In June, my Iron Outreach street team completed a sizzling two-day mission trip to Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and DC. Every locale provided its share of memorable moments, but none topped our time in the nation’s capital.
When the time came to start planning our December mission trip, Josh, Joe, Kurt, and I unanimously agreed to return to Washington. Things had gone so great the first time, we couldn’t wait to get back and see what was next.
We arrived last Thursday, and after what felt like an hour of driving around trying to find our hotel parking lot — and then trying to wedge Joe’s Dodge Ram into it — we excitedly hit the streets with backpacks full of Bibles, pocket gospels, and tracts.
Immediately we noticed things were different. That day in June had had a palpable buzz. Everywhere you looked, some group was protesting something or another. Outside the White House, a man called the Truth Conductor was overseeing an argument between an atheist liberal sitting on the ground and an ostensibly Christian female presidential candidate.
At the time, I remember thinking our own nation’s capital was the second craziest city I’ve been to, outside Fremont Street in Vegas.
But this time, things were quiet.
It almost felt like — how do I put this — a normal city.
I knew the time of year had something to do with it. Summer streets are always going to be more packed than winter ones. But it was pretty warm for early December, so it wasn’t just that.
No, this time the response to the gospel was different, too. Whereas in June, the Bibles had flown out of our hands, this time it felt like we couldn’t give them away (which we were literally trying to do). You will always get rejections wherever you go, but this time they were occurring with greater regularity. Instead of just being told no, we were exposed to snarls, cold shoulders, and turned up noses. People either ignored us or looked at us and sneered at us. They didn’t just not want the gospel; they wanted us to know that they were too good for it.
After an hour, we paused for lunch, and I chose to regroup in prayer. When I want to put a mission trip or evangelism team together, I will often pray in accordance with Matthew 9:37, which tells us the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few; so usually I pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out laborers into his harvest. But this time, I just had to pray for the harvest itself. We had come a long way, and it was beginning to look like there wasn’t going to be a harvest at all.
But after praying over lunch, momentum shifted the other way. Pocket gospels started flying out of our hands. The rest of the day and following morning were jam packed with interactions and opportunities. Overall, what started slow and somewhat discouraging turned into a massive endeavor on behalf of the kingdom. Many seeds were scattered across the city.
We need to be prepared for the possibility of being rejected for the gospel. The Hebrew prophets were rejected all the time, yet when Jeremiah so much as contemplated quitting, he said he couldn’t do it. It wasn’t about him; it was about the Lord’s message. And the need to share that message burned within him.
If the need to share that message is burning within you, too, trust the Lord of the harvest. After all, it’s HIS harvest. And if the moment has got you down, don’t be afraid to pause and pray. Then pick up your tracts and march back into battle like a boxer coming out for the final round of a prizefight. Just keep going till you hear the bell, and trust that the Lord is sovereign over it all.
Some highlights from DC:
* Things really got going for us when we got to the National Mall. I’ve been to DC many times, but I don’t remember ever checking this out in person before. Many Forrest Gump jokes were made as we looked upon the water.
* Halfway up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, four Indian people asked me to take their pic with the memorial in the background. I flipped the camera around and took a secret picture of myself smiling first, then took the picture of them. All four of them took pocket gospels from me. We saw them laughing when they discovered the goofy picture I took of myself on their phone. I desperately hope they kept it.
* After the four Indian people, I also met an Indian man from Australia who was already a Christian. He appreciated what we were doing. He was an encouragement to me as the trip was just starting to hit its stride.
* While I finished up with the Indian Australian Christian guy, I was also approached by a man from Miami who was a Messianic Jew. He was very friendly and got very excited when he found out I was Jewish. He was a little preoccupied with keeping the OT civil and ceremonial laws for my tastes, but a decent guy and still an encouragement overall.
* We started to make our way from the Lincoln Memorial to the bridge that crossed into Virginia to see Arlington National Cemetery. We ended up giving a Bible to a homeless woman as we walked. It started off hopeful, but then she began to tell me that the original Bible was written by Freemasons and was in a building across the street (how convenient). More troubling than that, she told me that every person was endowed with righteousness at birth by the Holy Spirit — which is not biblical at all. We are born in sin and need Christ’s righteousness to cover us. I tried to make sure she heard the actual gospel, but we eventually had to cut the conversation off.
* We crossed the bridge on foot and made our way into the cemetery. We handed out a ton of tracts and pocket gospels to security workers and tram drivers there. The gospel was super well received in this area. Maybe it was the fact that they worked at a cemetery (a literal storage area of death), I don’t know, but it felt like much of the staff craved God’s Word there.
* Inside the cemetery, we would get to see the changing of the guard (a very solemn ceremony), as well as JFK’s eternal flame. But before that happened, I gave a pocket gospel to a woman sitting on a curb. As I walked away, another woman (who had previously rejected a gospel) walked up to her and said, “You don’t have to keep that. You can throw that away if you want to.” I don’t know what ultimately happened, but I kept thinking I would not want to be the woman who tried to intercept the gospel on judgment day.
* We ended up calling an Uber to get back downtown after the cemetery. As my friends squeezed into the backseat, I sat shotgun. I made small talk with the driver, asking him how long he’d been out that day. I like to get these people talking. Before long he told me he liked to study religion. I asked him what he had found. He said he found that Islam was the truth. I asked him why. He said because the Koran contained scientific facts that had since been proven true. I said the same could be said of the Bible and I gave him a few examples. He pulled up to the Washington Monument to let us out, and my friends all hopped out and waited probably 20 minutes while I continued to speak with him. He ended up cancelling his next ride so he could speak with me. I tried to answer all of his questions, which were mainly about whether we could trust the Bible. In the end, I made sure he heard the actual message of the gospel and encouraged him to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Bible he had taken from us.
* While they waited for me, my friends watched a giant menorah being lit for Hanukkah across the street. When I rejoined them, they told me that at the Hanukkah ceremony, someone had been promoted to five star. I asked, “Five star what?” They said, “Five star… Jew?” I asked what on earth was a five star Jew. They said me being Jewish, they thought I’d know. For the record, I do not know any five star Jews, but if any are reading this, please respond to this post.
* After dinner, Joe and I headed back out, this time to stroll a bar and restaurant district on 14th Street NW. (I wish I knew the actual name of this neighborhood. The best I can surmise from Google Maps is Logan Circle, but I don’t think it’s that.) We offered a pocket gospel to a homeless man named Darryl who reeked of pot. He asked us to pray with him, and then he chose to lead the prayer. As he prayed, he began to cry profusely. He said that he should be the one to face the consequences for his actions, not God. I sensed that he was genuinely broken over his sin, so I then prayed that the Lord would use that to plant the seeds of faith and repentance in him. I thought he could use a little something, so I took him into McDonald’s for a chicken sandwich after that.
* After Darryl, we offered a pocket gospel to another Muslim. He said even though he didn’t believe what we believed, he wanted to take what we were offering to show his support for what we were doing. He said it meant a lot to him that while everyone else on the street was out eating and drinking and being merry, we were out trying to spread righteousness. He said the world needed more of that. He also said that while the media tried to paint a picture of Christians and Muslims being unable to get along, he didn’t see it that way. I told him I agreed. I had just had a pleasant conversation with the Muslim Uber driver earlier, and to be honest, I have never had anything but pleasant interactions any time I have witnessed to a Muslim. I didn’t press him too hard on the gospel message after that. He was already taking a pocket gospel with him, and I decided to let the Word of God do its job, which it could do better than I could anyway.
* The next morning, the four of us returned to 14th Street to hand out more stuff for a few hours before driving home. Josh gave a gospel to a guy who looked at it, then crossed the street and dumped it directly in a trash can. This guy could have just given it back to us if he didn’t want it, but it was clear what he wanted was to send the message that he thought the gospel was trash.
* And in our final major interaction of the trip, we met Lauren, who unzipped her fanny pack and gave us a gospel tract of her own (penned by Mark Cahill, an evangelist who has had a major influence on me). She excitedly got her pastor on the phone and I got to speak with him for a few minutes. He said they were trying to make spiritual headway in the city and felt like the fact that we had driven down from Philadelphia to evangelize for two days was an answer to their prayers. What an encouraging way to wrap up a trip that had seemed to start on such a down note. Just keep evangelizing when you’re feeling down about these things, because you just never know.
All in all, a great trip, punctuated by a stop at Pizza John’s outside Baltimore. No trip anywhere, ever, is complete without a slice of pizza to me.
Many people donated to help us purchase the Bibles, tracts, and pocket gospels for this trip, so a hearty thank you to all of those people.
As for what’s next for this team? We are already talking about Cleveland next summer. We had a great trip there around this time last year. After our last two stops in DC, I’m sure we will find our way back to the nation’s capital at some point, too.
-JDM-
P.S.: Be on the lookout. My new book, "Start Spreading The News: Your Top Nine Objections To Sharing The Gospel & How To Overcome Them," is coming soon!
